posted at 3:35 pm on July 30, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

Democrats want to recast themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility, after going on a four-year spending spree that has seen an annual increase in federal spending of over a third. President Obama has conferred a panel to find ways to attack deficits and lower the national debt. One might think that cutting back on spending would be on the table, both in the commission and in Congress.

A Democratic spending fight broke out behind closed doors Thursday, as party leaders successfully pressured four junior lawmakers not to offer an amendment slashing housing and transportation programs by $1.02 billion.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey argued passionately against the amendment and its authors — though not by name — in a speech to the Democratic Caucus in the morning, according to Democratic insiders. He pointed to the importance of the targeted programs and noted that the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill’s bottom line of $67.4 billion is less than the $68.7 billion proposed by the president, sources said.

“Obey got up there, and he was pissed,” said a senior Democratic aide.

He was quickly backed up by House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-Conn.), who urged fellow Democrats to lobby the amendment’s sponsors, Reps. Gary Peters of Michigan, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Peter Welch of Vermont and John Adler of New Jersey not to offer their plan.

Obey’s retiring, so he probably doesn’t care much one way or the other about the impact of spending in this session. However, party leaders such as Larson will have to stick around for a while, or at least want to stick around. Whether voters return Larson and other Democrats in charge remains to be seen, but pitching tantrums over a $1 billion reduction in a bill over $60 billion shows that Democratic leadership still doesn’t understand the anger in the electorate.

What’s remarkable about this is not just the amount of the cut — less than two percent of the overall bill — but where the amendment would have cut spending. The two Democrats targeted programs that Appropriations had funded over the amount requested by the White House. One of the programs involved low-income housing for veterans, however, and that cut was the straw that broke the camel’s back — even though it merely returned the spending level to the White House request.

Clearly, we have to cut a lot more than one billion dollars from the federal budget. And just as clearly, Democrats can’t bring themselves to do it. (h/t: analogkid2112 on Twitter)

The ads just write themselves! These guys will never cut ANYTHING. Except defense, of course.

Barney Frank’s committee just quietly passed two housing bills that will massively expand the failed public housing and Section 8 programs and create even more useless jobs at HUD. Haven’t seen anything about this, even in the conservative media.

Retiring Congressmen who vehemently oppose spending cuts like this need to followed after their retirement. Odds are, the money they were defending was actually ear-marked as a supplemental retirement account, conveniently directed to their own district.

Huh. Anyone wanna bet ‘Ol Blowhard himself, former Sen. Stevens (AK)is upset over being outed as a long-time corrupt politician? My guess is he hasn’t given the last 40 years a second thought. He’s too busy spending the “earmarked” money he sent home, literally.

Barney Frank’s committee just quietly passed two housing bills that will massively expand the failed public housing and Section 8 programs and create even more useless jobs at HUD. Haven’t seen anything about this, even in the conservative media.

Michael Barone has figured out that if you extrapolate the pattern of voting shifts in the January 2010 Massachusetts Senate election to November 2010, then the Democrats have only 103 safe House seats.

Reading this, I’ve come to the conclusion that our legislators are too busy in caucus meetings listening to the echo chamber, rather than being in the full house hearing views with a wide range that would represent our entire nation better.

One of the programs involved low-income housing for veterans, however, and that cut was the straw that broke the camel’s back — even though it merely returned the spending level to the White House request.
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Again,the Liberals claim that they support the US Military!!

OK, Why is low income housing for veterans in the TRANSPORTATION bill?

What was the transportation funded budget for FY 2006? Let’s roll back spending to that level.

karenhasfreedom on July 30, 2010 at 3:44 PM

It’s the way Congress has divied up the appropriations. It lumps several agencies into one bill so one subcommittee can handle it. Transportation and housing are part of the same appropriations bill. The worst part of this is that if you want to cut something from HUD you have to take it out of Transportation, and vice versa.

Here’s a summary summary of the DOT/HUD bill – note how many programs are being INCREASED over what the President requested.

Typical Democrat fiscal relativism. When it comes to a couple of hundred new F-22, $3 billion is a staggering fortune! But when it comes to an economy-crushing Keynesian/pork spending spree, or industry-crushing corporatist adventures in car company socialization or medical industry “reform,” trillions are just modest investments. Doublethink is upon us. $3 billion > $3 trillion, P and ~P, and Harry Reid is holding up three fingers, not four.

Seriously folks, I don’t believe the Republicans have that much credibility on this issue. Granted, spending (as well as corruption)increased when Democrats won the House majority, but the Republicans didn’t exercise enough fiscal restraint themselves during the first six years of G.W.Bush.

The voters just aren’t interested in Republicans if they’re going to be ‘Democrat light’.

C’mon America, try out the new Democrat Light Party. It’s got 1/3 less liberalism than the regular Democrat Party. Also tastes great, and is less filling . . .

No offense steveegg, but fat, stupid, liberal David Obey has run for re-election every two years since he got in the House in 1969. If northwestern Wisconsin voters wanted him retired, they could have done that in any of the past 20 elections.

I would draw everyone’s attention to another more insidious aspect of this which Ed alluded to. That is the practice of calling decreases in the planned expansion of programs as “cuts”. This charade is played out over and over, just as we see here. Program X is scheduled to increase by 10%. When someone suggests that the increase be only 5% it is attacked as a huge 50% reduction and slashing of a key program.

Nowhere does a program seem to actually get cut like you and I would do, i.e. we spent $1,000 for a something last year and this year we are only going to spend $800.

Until this semantic trick gets highlighted each and every time and this game of faux “cuts” ended the overall size of government is never going to decrease.

I would draw everyone’s attention to another more insidious aspect of this which Ed alluded to. That is the practice of calling decreases in the planned expansion of programs as “cuts”. This charade is played out over and over, just as we see here. Program X is scheduled to increase by 10%. When someone suggests that the increase be only 5% it is attacked as a huge 50% reduction and slashing of a key program.

Nowhere does a program seem to actually get cut like you and I would do, i.e. we spent $1,000 for a something last year and this year we are only going to spend $800.

Until this semantic trick gets highlighted each and every time and this game of faux “cuts” ended the overall size of government is never going to decrease.

mrveritas on July 30, 2010 at 7:49 PM

We seem to have long lost that argument because the democratics own the old media. The newest semantic tomfoolery is to label tax cuts as ‘spending’, and the liberals are winning on that one too.

Yes we do, and they love to have them bring home the bacon. It is sickening. They just got 800 million for a high speed train from Milwaukee to Madison. What for? This is not NYC or Chicago for crying out loud. Who will fund it down the road? 2/3’s of WI is rural and many unemployed. Thank Obey for that one. What a putz.